Book Description

THEY WON’T STAY DEAD.

A band of road-weary survivors struggling to find refuge from the living dead.

A family sticking together, barricaded in their home while the living dead besiege the town.

Scientists working under the thumb of the United States government in the Mount Weather Special Facility are trying desperately to understand why the dead are returning to life, and they might have found out why…

STAY DEAD, the first novel in the series, is a fast-paced journey through the ruined streets of a world gasping for one last breath. It blends action and adventure into a dreadfully bleak look at what the inevitable zombie apocalypse will look like.

A band of road-weary survivors struggling to find refuge from the living dead.

A family sticking together, barricaded in their home while the living dead besiege the town.

Scientists working under the thumb of the United States government in the Mount Weather Special Facility are trying desperately to understand why the dead are returning to life, and they might have found out why…

STAY DEAD, the first novel in the series, is a fast-paced journey through the ruined streets of a world gasping for one last breath. It blends action and adventure into a dreadfully bleak look at what the inevitable zombie apocalypse will look like.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Steve Wands lives in New Jersey with his wife and son. He’s a freelance artist by day and writer by night. He drinks too much coffee, and sleeps very little. He is the author of the Stay Dead series of short stories, collections, and novels as well as Horror Stories: A Macabre Collection, Words Like Daggers, Modern Nightmares, and plenty of short stories. He also co-edited and contributed to Dark: A Horror Anthology. You can visit his blog here: http://www.stevewands.blogspot.com or play with his twitter: http://twitter.com/swands

I was disappointed in this book. So, I gave it three stars for average. The main problem is the character development. The author kills them off so fast you never really get to know them and have very little sympathy for them when they get killed. That goes for the bad guys as well. The baddest of which is apparently a serial killer or rapist but his character, while it could have really added to the story as a subplot (running from zombies and/with a psychopath) is not developed and the killings come totally out of left field.

The story also jumps around a bit too suddenly. For instance we are taken from the zombie attacks to a secret lab in the hills of West Virginia and suddenly introduced to a new character. But how did she get there? Who is she, does she have a family, why was she selected to work in the lab?

Then there is the gore. I know zombie books are supposed to have gore, that's one of the reasons I read them. But when it is repeated over and over again it gets boring. Zombies walking, trailing their intestines really only needs to be done once.

I also took some star power away for believability. I know, expecting believability in zombie book is asking a lot. But to have corpses rise from the grave, without explanation, no matter how long or how deep they were buried really is a stretch. I mean does everyone who ever lived suddenly come back as a zombie? Then the discovery that the zombies are actually speaking, just pronouncing the words backwards. Maybe some of the "gore" was from Tipper? I was relieved to find that I had not been duped into reading some evangelical nonsense.

Finally, there is the editing. Please someone help this author (and too many others) with the differences between, their, there, they're, no, know, to and too. There is one chapter that suddenly changes voice from past tense to present tense and then back to past tense, leaving the reader with a "Huh?" moment. The ending indicates there will be a sequel. There has to be since the reader is left hanging.

The upside is the description of the action. I thought this was well done and the book is fast paced. The author does know how to make you turn the pages. I didn't mean to trash the book. I liked it in spite of the flaws. It is worth the cost and still worth reading.Read more ›

I read some of the other reviews before I bought this book and I'm glad I bought it. I liked the story line and the fact that characters seem to be killed off rather quickly fits perfectly. Listen, when the numbers of the dead are in the millions any attempted movement between locations will result in a loss of people in the group and there is no telling who it will be, its a dangerous world. So, I liked and hated characters and there are lots of loose ends that could be used in follow up stories and if the author is reading this I say "get to work" I'm waiting to see what happens next. I recommend this book to all zombie fans.

For $.99, I can't really complain too much, but this read like a first draft, rather than a finished novel. There were numerous grammatical errors (use of the possessive when making something plural and vice versa being the most common), and although the book was written in third person past tense, one chapter was inexplicably third person present. A good proofreader could have made a huge difference.

The story feels choppy and would benefit from smoother transitions. It's especially jarring when the story jumps from one group of survivors to the others, often without adequate introduction of the new scene or characters. The characters are underdeveloped, usually given only cursory backstories (if any). That's fine for the minor characters, but the major characters need more substance, especially if they're going to hook the reader emotionally. Reading the dialogue, you'd be hard-pressed to know which character was speaking if the author didn't identify them by name; none of them have particularly unique voices.

Wands often creates interesting situations (the introduction of a serial killer in the group of survivors being the best one), but rather than taking his time and fully exploring them over the course of the novel, or at least several chapters, he introduces them and resolves them in a short amount of time, missing some great opportunities for conflict and character development.

The author clearly loves zombie lit and wants to bring some new elements to the genre, however he has a tendency to fall back on zombie/horror movie cliches (a certain amount of that is unavoidable). While a proofreader would be extremely helpful, Wands really needs an editor. He has some good material and ideas; he just needs help focusing them and presenting them to maximum effect.

In the Gartner Magic Quadrant of Zombie books, this book would be in the lower left corner of "poorly written trash" and "unimaginative dreck". I had to read a sentence two or three times to figure out what the author was trying to say because he would use the wrong word or leave out an entire phrase. Several homonyms were *always* misspelled ("waived" appeared wherever the author intended "waved", and "past" for "passed"). The author used trite clichés instead of digging deep to create emphasis or description. He used too many adjectives and adverbial phrases and the "sex scene" was just childish and completely out of place. It seemed as if every chapter started in the present tense (usually a sign the narrator will be dead by the end of the book, but this was written in the third person) and switched suddenly to the past tense.

I am really forgiving of self-published ebooks, especially post-apocalyptic pulp. However, the author couldn't decide what he wanted this book to be, so he crammed in a lot of characters, a handful of plots (that in some ways converge with huge holes), and then gave up at the end without taking the book to a real conclusion. ("The book was awful and it was too short!")

Don't buy this. I can say with some confidence no one read this book before publishing it, even the author or his family.

More About the Author

STEVE WANDS is the author of the STAY DEAD series of novels, short stories, and collections as well as many other short stories.

He is currently hard at work on the third and fourth novels in the STAY DEAD series, as well as new collaboration with a fellow indie author.

Steve lives in New Jersey with his wife and sons. When he's not writing he's lettering Comic Books and Graphic Novels for DC Comics, BOOM! Studios, and Random House on titles like Attack on Titan, FBP, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Adventure Time, Regular Show, Next Testament, Six-Gun Gorilla, and a slew of others.